Flux Drama: Did Ryan Carson Lie About Investors?

• Last Friday, Ryan Carson announced a list of strategic investors for his new company, Flux.
• Unfortunately, many of those "investors" were surprised by the announcement and hadn't actually contributed money.
• It appears the tweet was a miscalculated tactic to leverage influencer name recognition to drum up investments.
• The controversy angered many and put Carson's checkered history back in the spotlight.

Friday witnessed an explosion of drama within NFT Twitter. Apparent friends turned on each other. Two of the principal participants in the event were recent guests on Redlion Spaces! Reactions to the spectacle ranged from “this was an honest mistake” to “this is the type of scam behavior that justifies a career’s end.” If you haven’t heard, the drama was instigated by Ryan Carson and the announcement of his new investment fund, Flux. 

The controversy had nothing to do with the company and everything to do with who was tagged in the now deleted tweet. The message had an impressive list of 21 “investors” including scions of the space like Gary Vee, Pudgy Penguins’ Luca Netz, NFT Nick (aka Nick O’Neill), and several others. Everything looked great… except that the people included in the tweet started to speak out: Apparently, most of them had either not invested yet, had little knowledge of the project, or were blindsided by the announcement entirely! This is important because the Flux website said it was raising $10,000,000 total from 100 investors, with only 79 spots left. Thus, the list of 21 tagged investors was being used as bait to hook in the rest of Flux’s investors.

Imagine contributing money based on a false list! At best, it seems like Carson engaged in a highly misleading marketing tactic. Or as one of the 21, GMoney, put it, “Being asked to be announced as an investor is nothing out of the ordinary. What is out of the ordinary is that the announcement is made before the funds are fully raised.” Given this situation and the high publicity that swirled on social media Friday, GMoney went on to say, “I don't feel comfortable with how this announcement was made before fundraising was complete, and the tactics for fundraising, and thus am no longer committing to the deal.” This was just one of a cascade of influencers distancing themselves from Flux and Ryan Carson.

Luca Netz (who along with Carson was the other recent guest of Redlion Spaces) unequivocally denied more than the most tangential connection to Flux. He stated, “I didn’t sign anything. I didn’t fund anything… I’ve made it clear to Ryan that i don’t want to be apart (sic) of this.” Similar sentiment was echoed by j1mmy.eth, @andr3w and others. 

Flux's disastrous “investor” backlash comes in the context of Carson’s checkered history within business and web3. As a co-founder of the coding school, Treehouse, Carson was criticized for firing the majority of staff suddenly and without severance in August of 2021. In April of 2022, Carson was embroiled in controversy over his exit from Moonbirds. He was accused of insider trading and then leaving the project five days after launch. He left Moonbirds to start an NFT investment fund, 121g, which has an imperfect trade history. 

Despite the history, Carson has many allies that went to bat for him. Ryan is praised as a community builder who has connected a loyal group of listeners together through his show, Daily Dose. Many of those followers came to his defense during Friday’s fracas.

As time passes, the fallout from this Flux announcement will settle. It will be interesting to see if the fund will flourish into the web3 incubator it is intended to be… or if too much damage has already been done.